September 5th: Baking Season arrived with a bang during during the night. Or rather with an apparent downpour...our rain gauge showed .71" of rain and a neighbor, a little further up in the Foothills got .9". And up at NCAR...1.5". This may not sound like a lot to those of you who live back east or up in the Pacific Northwest, but trust me, that amount of rain at this time of year makes all of us along the Front Range of Colorado a little nervous ! It was right about this time last year when we had the historic 18" of rain in a week that caused so much havoc. In fact, the rains started in earnest Sept 9th last year.Last night's rain has soaked in and the temperature has hovered in the mid-50s, with overcast skies, so it just feels like a nice respite from the 95 degrees of direct sun on Wednesday. I spent the morning baking several hundred cookies for tomorrow's event: Humane Society of Boulder Valley's Doggie Dash. It's a fun run and pet market ( supplies and such, not selling cats and dogs ! ...although there will be some up for adoption ). I'll be with Lynn Halpern from The Leading Veg, helping people recognize that other animals, just like their beloved cats and dogs feel pain and suffering and if asked, would rather live. We remind people that animals that are called "food animals"...pigs, chickens, cows, goats,fish, sheep, turkeys, ducks, horses...all have an interest in living and not being slaughtered, no matter how "humanely" it is done or how much a person prays over them and feels gratitude ( while savoring the animal's flesh, milk or eggs ). How do we do this ? We bring lots of delicious food and recipes and have lots of great pamphlets on hand that offer tons of information on the Hows and Whys of going vegan. And we talk to people...lots of people ! It is a fun few hours and great outreach.We'll be offering two kinds of cookies...a very easy Oatmeal Raisin and a Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip that I actually prefer over the non-GF kind now. I stumbled upon the recipe a little over a year ago and have made it many times since then. Sometimes I use agave syrup instead of the maple syrup. I've made it with cranberries and sliced almonds for the holidays. I've used Just Like Honey syrup and orange zest with orange-scented chocolate chunks. It really is a great recipe...even the raw dough is addictive !

Update... September 6: Just got back from the Doggie Dash ! What started out as a cool foggy morning for set-up time at 7:30 turned into a very nice sunny day. Perfect for the people and dogs to have do their 5k run in and come back to sample our vegan offerings. We had to remind folks that our food was PEOPLE FOOD...not for the dogs ( although the dogs certainly enjoyed what occasionally fell from people's hands ! )...since many of the vendors there had dog food samples and treats at their booths. Lynn came up with a little slogan of we were offering : "Animal-free People Food ". I love that :)

We met lots of great people of all ages interested in eating vegan for every reason from health to environmental and for the animals. So many reasons to go vegan ! Here's what we had : Lynn's Eggless Salad, who's recipe can be found here. A lovely Curry Chicken-style Salad ( recipe below ) and some browned up slices of Field Roast Sausages. She also brought along some Carrot cake Cupcakes with a Maple Glaze and Toasted Coconut,( baked by her our friend Kelly..recipe coming soon ! ), the Easy Oatmeal Cookies ( recipe below ) and the gluten-free Chocolate chip cookies, which have to be tasted to be believed....make them today !